[quote="Skeeza, post:1822, topic:1343"]Was watching the Pens/Capitals game 5. The commentators were talking a lot about the Penn State hockey program.

They mentioned a kid that was picking up his bachelors degree one day, and was picking up his masters on the very next day. One of the commentators said, “I didn’t know that was possible”.

Does anyone know the kid they were talking about?[/quote]

Tommy Olczyk got his Masters degree. Not sure who they were talking about though.

It was Olczyck (and he was getting both degrees). They were having the conversation because Tommy’s dad, Eddie, would have normally been broadcasting the game but he was on his way to PSU (albeit via Churchill Downs where he apparently also had some Kentucky Derby duties earlier on Saturday).

[quote="Skeeza, post:1822, topic:1343"]Was watching the Pens/Capitals game 5. The commentators were talking a lot about the Penn State hockey program.

They mentioned a kid that was picking up his bachelors degree one day, and was picking up his masters on the very next day. One of the commentators said, “I didn’t know that was possible”.

Does anyone know the kid they were talking about?[/quote]

Tommy Olczyk got his Masters degree. Not sure who they were talking about though.

It was Olczyck (and he was getting both degrees). They were having the conversation because Tommy’s dad, Eddie, would have normally been broadcasting the game but he was on his way to PSU (albeit via Churchill Downs where he apparently also had some Kentucky Derby duties earlier on Saturday).

Yeah, Eddie was on the NBC derby broadcast. My wife even recognized him. She asked “hey isn’t he the dad of that kid who plays hockey for Penn State?” I had to chuckle. To most people, Tommy is Eddie’s son. Through my wife’s eyes, Tommy is more famous.

NEWS: The 2015-16 Penn State men's hockey team celebrated its historic season by announcing the individual awards presented by the program. Graduating senior Luke Juha (Mississauga, Ontario) headlined the awards as the team's MVP and top defenseman.

Kind of a meh schedule. Going to Notre Dame is great and playing St. Lawrence is nice, but otherwise it’s a lot of not very good teams that isn’t going to help a lot come RPE and Pairwise calculations. No holiday tournament, so there is no variability where we “might” get a better opponent.

I do like it that we are finally playing Mercyhurst just so we have a presence in Erie. And Princeton is a much more logical opponent to be playing in Philly compared to Vermont.

I’d like to see us schedule some NCHC teams at some point, since that tends to be the best overall conference. Though it might be tough to convince those teams to travel to State College. Also, one opponent that would be great would be Cornell which is not only a solid team generally, but a reasonably close distance from State College.

[quote=“SideshowBob, post:1839, topic:1343”]Kind of a meh schedule. Going to Notre Dame is great and playing St. Lawrence is nice, but otherwise it’s a lot of not very good teams that isn’t going to help a lot come RPE and Pairwise calculations. No holiday tournament, so there is no variability where we “might” get a better opponent.

I do like it that we are finally playing Mercyhurst just so we have a presence in Erie. And Princeton is a much more logical opponent to be playing in Philly compared to Vermont.

I’d like to see us schedule some NCHC teams at some point, since that tends to be the best overall conference. Though it might be tough to convince those teams to travel to State College. Also, one opponent that would be great would be Cornell which is not only a solid team generally, but a reasonably close distance from State College.[/quote]

It’s actually a dreadful schedule if we are looking at it from an RPI standpoint. UAA, Canisius, Niagara, Arizona State and Princeton are all bottom 10 teams (last year’s final pairwise). Mercyhurst is middle of the pack. St. Lawrence and Notre Dame are top 20 teams. So 9 of 14 are horrible, one is okay and 4 are the type of games we should expect.

That said, I don’t mind it. This year is a little bit of a transition year in my opinion. We lost a LOT of senior leadership. A LOT of man games are gone. Counting James Robinson as a sophomore, and assuming the roster looks like what has been announced so far (the final roster has not been announced), I expect we’ll have 19 freshmen and sophomores and only 7 juniors and seniors. One of the juniors will be in his first year with the program (transfer Trevor Hamilton). Throw in the fact that our only returning goalie has about 70 minutes of NCAA experience, and I see the need to start out with an easier non conference schedule. We probably aren’t a tournament team anyway.

Now, before anyone tries to compare this schedule to basketball, let’s not forget that hockey only has 54 non conference opponents it can possibly schedule. Basketball has 6 times that many. And hockey is typically scheduled in two game weekends, not single games on any day of the week. Finding matchups that fit the calendar probably isn’t the easiest thing to do. We don’t have the history or the non conference rivalries yet to make it easier.

Finally, before I drop this, I appreciate that we are playing Arizona State. I hope we are going to Tempe next year as the back half of a home and home. We were able to get some schools like UMass Lowell and Union to schedule home and homes with us when we first started out. So I hope we are paying those favors back by helping out the next new kid on the block. Besides that, I expect ASU to be much improved and think they will play us a lot tougher than their 59 out of 60 ranking from last year would suggest. I expect UAA, Princeton and Niagara to also be much improved.